Posted on 05/16/2003 2:37:05 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
It takes cooperation and respect on both sides of the aisle to create and maintain a bipartisan atmosphere. The citizens of Texas are able to judge for themselves which members have conducted themselves in a strictly partisan fashion.
However, the notion that a new congressional plan for Travis County would be bad, and thus justifies the Democrats' action, is premised on the supposition that the current plan is objective. It is not. It was drawn by three federal judges in Tyler, who kept the 1991 Democrat plan largely in place.
The Austin American-Statesman editorial board has also suggested that the redrawing of districts by the Legislature is unfair, yet there was no criticism when numerous off-year redistricting plans were imposed by the Democrats to accommodate their own members' whims. In fact, 1997 saw the Democratic leadership redraw the House seats in McClennan County for the sole purpose of putting a home being built by the current House Democratic Caucus chair into his district. That member's claims of the moral high ground from Oklahoma ring hollow.
There is no question that part of the frustration of the 51 Democrats who left their jobs in Austin arises out of other issues and their new experience of being unable to achieve all of their legislative goals. In time they will learn, as many Republicans learned in the past, that the public interest is often better served by working with the other party rather than by working solely against it. They would have a readily available resource to share with them, the firsthand experience of living in that situation. They need check no further than with those of us who have served as Republicans in elected office in Travis County.
For more than 130 years, the Democrat majority in the Texas Legislature has drawn congressional districts with the overt objective of protecting Democrat incumbents and minimizing opportunities for Republicans to be elected. In the most recent plan -- drawn in 1991 -- Democrats carved the people of western Travis County into a district represented by a congressman anchored on the Texas coast so that a Democrat would be insured of winning a seat encompassing the rest of Travis County.
On May 12, 2003 -- merely four months after the Texas House of Representatives began operating for the first time in more than a century with a Republican majority -- 51 Democrat House members left Texas rather than debate the redistricting issue and risk losing in the same legislative process they had used to their advantage. In so doing, they have jeopardized or killed a wide range of bills potentially favorable to Travis County, including criminal justice improvements, tax breaks for the elderly and a hospital district.
The Travis County House delegation represents a diverse constituency. Yet the prior Democrat majority relegated Travis County to one Republican House member out of five, placed Travis County's Republican state senator in San Antonio just to assure election of a Democrat senator for the bulk of Travis County, and gave western Travis County citizens an out-of-town congressman. Many who now justify the Democrats' walkout to "protect" Travis County from being split among several congressional districts expressed no such indignation during the years when the citizens of western Travis County received the same treatment from the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
Republicans have been elected by the people of Texas to a majority of seats in both the Texas House and Senate, to all statewide offices and to Texas' two U.S. Senate seats. That is Texas. The people of Texas want lower taxes, they want education finance reform, they want insurance reform, they want smaller government that spends less money.
The Statesman has not addressed the real issue of whether Travis County residents who do not share the current representative's liberal political philosophy would be better served by a representative who more closely represents their views.
Furthermore, to suggest that a new redistricting plan would leave Travis County voters without a representative who lives in our county is untrue. The Republican-proposed plan would include a congressional district primarily based in Travis County. It is just not a certainty that the representative from that district would be a Democrat.
However, the Democrat minority in the Texas House chooses to halt all legislation rather than debate whether their own party's congressional redistricting plan from 12 years ago is fair game for reconsideration today. They wish to do so because under their old plan, 17 of the state's 32 Congress members are Democrats. Furthermore, the Texas congressmen who would be in jeopardy under any new plan would be white male liberals, because redistricting would undoubtedly increase the number of Republicans and of Democrat minorities in the Texas congressional delegation.
For the past three months, many of the same Democrats who led the move to hide in Oklahoma have stalled bills, delayed the legislative process and subverted the will of the majority. We recognize there are legitimate differences of opinion and without question many of these Democrats, even in dissent, have made valuable contributions to the legislative process. But that cannot happen when they are not here.
Keel, Baxter and Stick are all Republicans representing parts of the Austin area.
Texas House Democrats celebrate after returning to Texas, on Thursday, May 15, 2003, near Gainesville, Texas, after spending four days in Ardmore, Okla., to kill a GOP-produced congressional redistricting plan. Traveling by bus, they expect to arrive at the state Capitol in Austin early Friday. (AP Photo/Ron Heflin)
If this is the way that the tumultuous ship of today's government, the institutions of 2003, is intended to be steered, then this is not the America that I had thought it was, been taught it was and hoped it was.
If the America I'd dreamed of and prayed for does not, in fact, exist, and Thomas Jefferson's "boisterous sea of liberty" has long since dried to shadowy pit of political regimes and power-hungry rapists of our Mother Freedom, then I will fight for the hopes of Washington and I will battle for the lessons of Lincoln. If America is to be true to herself, if man still be just, then let our Lady Liberty's voice be heard to mend this crack entrenching on our precious, sacred, irreplaceable bell of liberty -- our vote.*** LAURA CHILDERS, a junior at Memorial High School (Houston, TX)
KILLERs of the Democratic ProcesS
First of all, a MAJOR surprise if this is from the Austin American Statesman. I'd suggest we send letters of support to the writers of this editorial, because they are about to receive a TON of vitriolic liberal hate mail. I am astounded it this was run on their editorial page, but I'm also delighted.
Secondly, that photo of the returning Democrats - it looks like a drunken frat party. Considering that this has been a PR fiasco for the Dems, this surely won't go over well with those of us who vote/voted independently at the state level. I say VOTED as past tense for me, because after this I will NEVER VOTE DEMOCRAT AGAIN at ANY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT - even for dog catcher.
I will write in the name of a dead monkey before I let my vote be cast for a Democrat just because they are running unopposed in a local election.
There are probably thousands of other voters who feel the way I do. And they will make a difference in the next election...
In all of the media reports on this fiasco, how much ink or air time has been given to the fact that there are more DemocRATs in the Texas House than the 51 who went to Oklahoma?
Of the 11 DemocRATs who did not go to Oklahoma, from 7 to 9 were African-Americans WHO SUPPORTED THE REPUBLICAN REDISTRIBUTION PLAN. The desertion by the 51 was a RACIST ACT.
Now you know why most of Big Media hasn't mentioned those DemocRATs who didn't go.
It's an op-ed piece. A sop tossed to the GOP to keep them from totally blocking access to the Statesman's reporters for the next couple of years.
What failure? The redistricting was stopped cold dead. The price they have paid: Zero. They'll probably even bill the taxpayers for their vacation in Ardmore.
This is a FAILURE on the part of the Dems. This is the just opening salvo of this process, so don't call it a victory for them simply because they made it home alive...
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